Social Gaming

Why Gaming Isn't For Losers

We all know that Facebook didn’t invent social video gaming. Pong (yes, I’m apparently that old) was a multiplayer game, and my favorite 2600 game was Combat — a two-player battle that was basically Pong with tanks or planes, but you died when the single giant pixel hit your well-hung letter H... I mean tank. Looking back, gaming has been like the buddy glue between so many of my guy friends, but less homoerotic than that sounds. For guys like me who just don’t care about bar life, gaming has become the modern fire pit. Or, for guys who get suckered into cheesy weekend retreats to find the wang they left in the bushes, firepits are the modern firepits. But I digress.

There are so many games in my past that were made complete by two or more people yelling at the same screen:Halo 1 through 900, Rainbow Six: Vegas 1 and 2, Gears of War(s), Resistance 1 and 3 (man, the second one sucked), and every sports or fighting game ever. At my old loft, we hosted an epic multi-PS2 and multi-TV Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater battle royale that, even to this day, shocks me by what a great idea it was and how well it went off. Eventually the realism of EA’s Skate killed the tired formula that the Tony Hawk series became, but I doubt any other franchise can boast as many drunken feel-good moments as Tony Hawk can. I can still hear someone yelling “WHAAAAATTTT?!" at some series of moves that would have been doable if it weren’t for gravity, that perpetual downer.

Really valuable social lessons were learned during cooperative gaming sessions terrorizing Nazis, aliens or Nazi-aliens (it was just announced that Deadspace 3 will have a split-screen co-op mode, so that’s not exaggeration). When the apocalypse has come and we’re as jaded and hurting as a couple at a Home Depot, rest assured that I won’t bogart the health kits. And I’ll try not to be a reload mom — I know you don’t need reminding when your chamber is almost empty. It’s just ’cuz I care.

But not every dude + social gaming memory I have is a good one. Like any sport where competition and fragile male egos are involved, sometimes the testosterone and gaming combine to make a roid rage-like cocktail. In high school, I narrowly avoided being stabbed in an arcade over a game of Mortal Kombat. Social gaming etiquette 101: When things get intense and you die, don’t reach into a garbage pail, smash a bottle and declare “you’re dead” to whoever killed your avatar. This isn’t West Side Story or Avatar.

Another strange consequence of social gaming’s increased popularity is that certain games have become uncool. Inviting someone to play Rock Band today would be like asking them over to listen to your Gino Vannelli LP collection, but with even less retro appeal. Now we have all this plastic musical gear that we’d have a hard time giving away because that game is so thoroughly over. I recently read about bacteria that consumes plastic. I hope the bacteria also has a sense of rhythm, because I know what’s for dinner for the next 100 years.